VPN questions
Have been reading some lately about these. SIL has it in place on their phones. He claims it's so cell provider cant see what he is doing with the phone. He claims it mask's data usage to avoid overa...
Forum Discussion
Knowing what a VPN is will help you understand what it can and cannot do.
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It "virtually" sets up a secure connection between your computer and another computer over the internet. The goal is to make it as secure as a private network, like when you are connected directly to another computer in your own office. That's all it does.
That remote computer (at the VPN host) then goes out to the internet, just like you would do by yourself if you were not on a VPN. So your link to the VPN server is secure, but from that point on it is no more secure than any other internet connection.
One advantage is that the VPN server can be in a different country, so it appears as though you are accessing the internet from that country. Many people outside the US use a VPN with servers in the US so they can access Netflix, or other things that might be restricted in their country.
With the switch to almost all websites now using https connections instead of non-encrypted http connections, a VPN is not really providing a huge security advantage for most people.
As you can see, many of the other things people think a VPN can do, or is doing for them, is nonsense.
A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. It "virtually" sets up a secure connection between your computer and another computer over the internet. The goal is to make it as secure as a private network, like when you are connected directly to another computer in your own office. That's all it does.
That remote computer (at the VPN host) then goes out to the internet, just like you would do by yourself if you were not on a VPN. So your link to the VPN server is secure, but from that point on it is no more secure than any other internet connection.
One advantage is that the VPN server can be in a different country, so it appears as though you are accessing the internet from that country. Many people outside the US use a VPN with servers in the US so they can access Netflix, or other things that might be restricted in their country.
With the switch to almost all websites now using https connections instead of non-encrypted http connections, a VPN is not really providing a huge security advantage for most people.
As you can see, many of the other things people think a VPN can do, or is doing for them, is nonsense.
